The Formidable

53

Madison slapped the file down on the kitchen table with a hefty thunk. Jase, Kieran and Sam stared at it, before looking up at her in question.

"What's that?" Kieran asked.

"That, my friend, is how all of this ends," she replied. 

Jase was more than familiar with this switch in Madison, it was the same one that had struck her after she'd killed Charlie. She was plotting and he knew whatever she had planned would be almost fool proof. Madison never did anything half arsed. If she was this confident about her idea and the files in front of him, it was for good reason. Yet a feeling of dread crept in because she was currently a live wire, fuelled by anger and adrenaline.

"You went to Mickey's deposit box?" Jase asked. 

Madison rolled her eyes. "Shut up, you know I did." He smirked, pulling the papers over to him. "Where's Mia?"

"In the living room with Janine," he replied as he opened the first page. Kieran looked at Madison, his stomach in knots at the thought of more planning and scheming. He had really been hoping that handing Mickey over would be the end of things and they could all carry on back to normality. Well, as close to normal as they ever got. Things were getting a bit too heady for his liking.

"I thought it was done?" he said. Sam snorted a disbelieving laugh. Both he and Janine had already predicted that, whether it happened now or in a years time, Madison would get the last laugh. She was too proud to just let something like Benny killing her dad go. Revenge was in her blood. 

Jase looked at Sam briefly, then Madison. Her expression had straightened out at Kieran thinking this was how it all ended. He should have known better than to say something like that. As if she would just let her dads death and Mia's kidnapping slide. It had been a fleeting hope, nothing more than a whisper in the wind and they all knew it.

"It isn't over until I say it's over," she said, turning and leaving the room to retrieve Mia and take her for a nap. 

"She's like an elastic band," Kieran said, "she keeps snapping back." He was in awe of Madison's determination to bring down anyone that had the audacity and stupidity to wrong her, and always had been. 

"This isn't her snapping back," Jase mumbled, shuffling through the papers and glossing over half the writing, "she's having a full blown meltdown and dealing with it the only way she knows how; by dealing with it." 

Kieran hummed. "She's quite proactive, really," he said. Jase and Sam glanced at each other, snickering. Anyone would think Kieran had completely forgotten who she was and the things she'd done. Knowing him, he probably had. It was in Kieran's nature to try and see the best in people, hence he'd never been sent out to do any of the intimidation. It's a wonder he'd made it this far. 

Jase continued to filter through the papers, there wasn't a lot of substantial information in the letters. Mostly, they were from when Mickey was in prison, a few legal documents including his life insurance, which Madison wouldn't be able to claim on due to the lack of a corpse, official papers, the odd bank statement. It wasn't until he was halfway through when his eyes widened, realising the second half of the stack was quality A4 photos. Incriminating photos of people that should not have been doing incriminating things. People that wouldn't want this material getting into the wrong hands. Like his, or Mickey's, for example.

"What?" Sam asked, seeing Jase's expression. Jase looked up, almost overwhelmed by the power he'd been handed.

"This is a fucking goldmine," he said quietly, excitedly. This, he assumed, was how young children felt on Christmas morning.